Where has this year gone? I feel like somebody’s hit the fast forward button on my life and I’m watching it run away without me. As the most incredible three years spent at uni draws to a close I’m feeling pretty nostalgic as I sit back and reflect on the crazy highs and the dignity-destroying lows.

I have to admit that uni was not at all how I imagined it. It was better.

For those innocents of you that are preparing to fly the nest this year, here is a list of the ten things they don’t tell you before you go to university…

1-

It really will be the best three/four/(if you are one of those absolute nutters doing Architecture) seven/ however many years of your life. Yes, it will.

2-

Your health will gradually break down. Living in squalid uni houses, eating bad food and drinking too much will definitely not make you the healthiest bunny rabbit in the cage so it is VITAL to drink through it.

3-

You will NEVER get used to having a hangover. In fact they appear to have worsened over the past three years.

4-

You will begin to display nocturnal tendencies. This is completely normal, do not be alarmed if you barely see daylight particularly during the winter months. I personally crawl out of bed around four, baffled that I have slept through yet another day and eventually venture out in the cover of darkness at around eight pm. Sometimes I like to pretend I’m a vampire.

5-

A substantial amount of your loan will be spent on fancy dress clothes. Locate a fancy dress store near you IMMEDIATELY.

6-

When it comes to a choice between food and vodka, you will choose vodka. Even if it means living off boil-in-the-bag rice and ketchup all week.

7-

More bouncers than lecturers will know your name. None of this, ‘you’re all unique and important’, you’ll be known as a student ID number for your entire course… but Steve, the bald-headed bouncer, will always remember you as the one who threw up all over your own feet.

8-

Pushing somebody around halls in a trolley, whilst drunk, will become one of the best nights of your life.

9-

By the time you actually come to the end of your degree after three short years you will be even less prepared for work and the outside world than before you became a student. This one is no joke, I don’t see 7am unless I’m stumbling in through the front door heavily intoxicated, so good luck getting up for work in future.

10-

You will NEVER EVER want to leave… hello postgrad

So there you have it, the ten things they don’t tell you in the undergrad prospectuses that the universities send out. But that’s not to say that uni is only about the nights you’ll never remember, it’s also about the people that you’ll never forget. I have learnt so much over the past three years that I can only fit ten things on this page… in fact it’s probably easiest just to list the things I haven’t learnt: I still can’t handle my drink and I don’t ever think I’ll master the art of boiling an egg.